Who are Kansas City’s champions for bicycling? The BBC says it’s 816 Bicycle Collective! Even at its worst, these cyclists believed that Kansas City had a bike-friendly future.
In 2008, reporters from the BBC came to Kansas City to find out what it’s like to bike in America’s worst city in America for cycling. They came back in 2026 to find new, safer infrastructure and a strong bicycling community. We caught up with some of the bike groups featured on the latest BBC story and asked them to share their vision of a safer, happier, healthier Kansas City. Here’s Anne Webb of 816 Bike Collective, and stay tuned for the next feature in our series!
816 Bike Collective
Founded: 2008
Volunteer interviewed: Anne Webb
What is meaningful about the work you do at 816 Bicycle Collective?
Anne: Our work at the 816 Bicycle Collective focuses on giving people agency over their own transportation. Many of our patrons can’t own or operate a motor vehicle due to age, health or finances. Getting an affordable bike can mean independence for kids. It can mean transportation to a better job. It can mean access to essential services.
The 816 is a special place to me because repair and maintenance knowledge is shared in a non-judgmental community space. I really treasure volunteers and patrons pulling together to maintain a community resource where people of all classes, races, identities and skill levels can both give and receive freely according to their capacity. I’m also proud that no one is ever turned away for lack of funds.
I often tell patrons that we have the cheapest bikes in town. Those cheap bikes and open shop hours are the result of 18 years and hundreds of thousands of hours of volunteer labor. 816 volunteers collectively have a vision of a world uplifted by collaboration, cooperation and personal agency where people can move themselves in a free, safe, fun, and environmentally-conscious way. That vision is manifest in the day-to-day running of a neighborhood community bike shop that is open to all.
What is something you want for the future of safer streets/biking in KC?
Anne: I’m someone who has lost a loved one to traffic violence. That incident was deadly because of high speed car traffic.
Slower cars mean safer streets for everyone, motorists included. The data shows that enforcement and signage are largely ineffective at reducing speeds. We need infrastructure that prioritizes low speeds on surface streets and multimodal safety. For now, that means road diets and replacing car lanes with space for transit, walking and biking.
The safest shared streets physically separate automobiles from bikes and bikes from pedestrians. That is what my advocacy focuses on the short term. Long-term, cycling and transit infrastructure must prioritize connectivity from all corners of the city to services and employment.
Ultimately, I’d love to see a system of fully independent urban bike trails that limit car/bike interaction to an absolute minimum. Repurposing lanes on shared roads is the easiest compromise at the moment. If it gets more people into the streetscape and outside of a car, I’m for it! But a future where Kansas Citians aren’t dependent on cars calls for big ideas beyond bollards and sharrows.
Want to volunteer with 816 Bike Collective? Click here to learn more and sign up
The Movement Builders series is inspired by "The Kansas City cycling revolution" episode of The Documentary Podcast from the BBC. Eighteen years ago, the reporters were warned to “get [their] affairs in order,” before bicycling in Kansas City because there were only six miles of bike lanes spread across the entire Kansas City metro. This time, the reporters found miles of new, protected bike lanes, ambitious programs like Vision Zero, energized ride groups, passionate volunteers and advocates, and happy teenagers riding bikes together after school.
Click here to listen to the 2008 story, and then click here to listen to the 2026 story